As Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) methodology has become more popular, software applications have emerged to help business managers implement ERP in business activities such as inventory control, order tracking, customer service, finance and human resources, etc.
Business Configuration of an ERP system requires comprehensive knowledge of the ERP system and its capabilities. Specifically, dependencies among different functions of the ERP system and their configurations are required in order to determine what functions need to be implemented and what system behaviour must be configured. For example, if a customer chooses to implement the “Sales Order Management” function, the customer must also implement the “Basic Sales Order” and “Pricing” functions if the “Sales Order Management” function depends on the “Basic Sales Order” function and the “Pricing” function. Failure to implement these functions means that the customer cannot run “Sales Order Management” function.
In conventional ERP systems, a scoping process (i.e., the task of determining what business functions of an ERP system are required according to a customer's business requirement) is handled manually by experienced, highly qualified consultants by analyzing the business requirement, determining a business solution, and implementing the business solution by configuring the ERP system. The more complicated the business system is, the more difficult to implement the business solution in a purely manual fashion.